February 17, 2015

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I want to join my colleagues in expressing my shock and sadness at the death of David Carr. David and I were not at all close, but we were friends in the sense that we compared notes whenever we ran into one another at social events, which we did quite frequently, since we had similar interests and sometimes musical tastes. Like everyone else, I have nothing but good things to say about him and his great work that so elevated the paper he loved. I was planning to get all sad about the tragedy of Jon Stewart’s “restlessness,” and I am, but it feels petty in light of the death of so young and so valuable a writer as David Carr. (And that goes quadruple for Brian Williams…)

And my new Nation column is about New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and his attempts to address economic inequality and that’s here.

Read it and then come back here. Notice that the Scheiber column is even more off base than I say, given the fact that right after my column went to press, a new poll was released with the following numbers: 58% approve of de Blasio’s performance in office, 24% disapprove according to the poll by New York One/Baruch College. So even by his own lights, there’s nothing there. It’s weird that he felt a need to write that column and no less weird that the Times was willing to print it…until you remember just how well the right’s “working the refs” actually works.

But leaving that aside, guess what? I wrote a book on this topic. Well, an ebook/paperback-on-demand, but it’s 185 pages so it’s pretty close to being a real book. Here is the excellent cover.

And here is the press release:

INEQUALITY AND ONE CITY:

Bill de Blasio and the New York Experiment, Year One

(eBookNation, February 16, 2015)

NEW YORK, NY – February 12, 2015 – Bill de Blasio’s election as mayor of New York captured the attention of a typically restless city. But it also made progressives across the country—and, indeed, around the world—sit up and take notice. Following an overwhelming landslide victory, de Blasio took office pledging to “put an end to economic and social inequalities that threaten to unravel the city we love.”

Based on interviews with dozens of key players in the upper echelons of the de Blasio administration, including the Mayor, the first Deputy Mayor, and most of de Blasio’s key commissioners and political advisors, along with a host of independent policy experts, award-winning author—and Nation columnist—Eric Alterman’s new e-book, INEQUALITY AND ONE CITY: Bill de Blasio and the New York Experiment, Year One (eBookNation, February 16, 2015), is a detailed and rigorous account of the Mayor’s first year in office.

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It is, as he writes in the preface, “an attempt to move beyond the day-to-day headlines that dominate our political debate. By placing Bill de Blasio’s words, and the actions of his administration, into a political, cultural, social, and intellectual context, we can see just how daunting the task he has set for himself really is: to use the power of the city government to make New York a fairer and more equal place for all its inhabitants, and to do so while executing the fundamental tasks of governance judiciously and efficiently.”

If you want to understand what is really at stake for the city and its inhabitants during the first year of “the de Blasio experiment”—the face-off with Governor Cuomo over pre-K, the charter school battle, the epic clash with the NYPD—and how each of these issues relates to the administration’s endeavor to address the city’s skyrocketing rate of economic inequality, Eric Alterman has the story.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eric Alterman is Distinguished Professor of English and Journalism, Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and Professor of Journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He is also "The Liberal Media" columnist for The Nation, a fellow of the Nation Institute, and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, DC, and the World Policy Institute in New York, as well as former columnist for The Daily Beast, The Forward, MomentRolling Stone, Mother JonesSunday Express (London) etc. Alterman is the author of nine previous books, including the national bestseller What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News. His first book, Sound & Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy (1992), won the George Orwell Award and his It Ain’t No Sin to Be Glad You’re Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen (1999) won the Jack London Literary Prize. Alterman has been called “the most honest and incisive media critic writing today” in The National Catholic Reporter and author of “the smartest and funniest political journal out there,” in The San Francisco Chronicle. A winner of the George Orwell Prize, the Jack London Literary Award and the Mirror Award for media criticism, he has previously taught at Columbia and NYU and has been Hoover Institution Media fellow at Stanford University. Alterman received his Ph.D in American history from Stanford, his M.A. in international relations at Yale and his B.A. from Cornell, He lives with his family in Manhattan. More information is available at ericalterman.com

I got weirdly attached to Megan Hilty when she was on “Smash.” I saw her do an informal promotional show at Joe’s Pub a couple of years ago but this was her first full-on performance and while she is still more potential than poise, I do think she could one day develop into a kind of next Barbara Streisand. She’s got a great booming voice, good comic timing and a genuine ability to communicate her love for the music. She’s also paid quite a bit more dues than I was aware of, on Broadway and various traveling companies before “Smash” (and motherhood). Her set was a mixture of Broadway tunes and classics, with a gorgeous “Heart of the Matter” from her first and only album thrown in. (It’s gorgeous when Don Henley sings it too, but it’s a different song when it’s sung by a woman.) As I said it’s a pleasure to see her develop, but I think she needs to stop laughing at her own jokes. I hate that. Who doesn’t? Someone needs to tell her.

Buster Poindexter at the Café Carlyle. 2/10/15

Buster got booked for two weeks at the Café which is great news especially if you are reading this, and are in New York, and want to go, since he’s playing this week too. Opening night was pretty crowded though, which I was also pretty pleased to see. And even though it’s the third time I’ve seen Buster at the Carlyle in eighteen months, I had a great time even though, let’s be honest, he’s doing pretty much exactly the same show; same jokes, too, which is a bit of a letdown, because he’s leaving lot of great jokes on the cutting room floor, including ones I’ve been telling for decades after hearing them from him. To be fair, there were a couple of VD songs thrown in. Otherwise, this review still holds:

“If I had a time machine, I would go back and kill Hitler, of course, among a lot of other things, but I would also like to stop by a New York Dolls show at the Mercer and casually mention to that cross-dressing punk, David Johansen that a few decades hence, he will be wearing a cheap tuxedo and playing the Carlyle in character as lounge lizard with impeccable taste in oldies moldies and goldies that almost nobody would ever hear performed live were it not for the said character, “Buster Poindexter,” with composters ranging from Gordon Jenkins, Frank Loesser and O.V. Wright. I wrote about his previous one-night only engagement at the Café and now, as per my advice, they gave him five nights. He was wonderful the night I saw him, looking like Eddie Haskell but sounding like Howlin’ Wolf. The band sparkled and the jokes fell flat—just as they were supposed to—and a splendid time was had by all. Judging by the house, I think Buster’ll be back there at least once a year from now on, maybe more, and if you’re looking for a fun special occasion, well, you could do a lot worse things with all that money.”

Three points I should add though:

a) He was back more than once a year

b) In my previous review—the one before the above one—I nominated him to be “Mr. New York” now that Bobby Short and Lou Reed were gone. And hey, that’s how they introduced him.

c) Finally, one thing I really appreciate about this show is the way David/Buster is expanding the “Great American Songbook” into places it’s never gone before. Megan Hilty did a little bit of this too and if you buy Steve Tyrell’s new album, “That Lovin’ Feeling,” which builds on his show at the Carlyle too, (and drawn from his early career as a producer at the Brill Building, etc) you’ll see it’s a trend. But it needs to become a bigger one. It’s really necessary and one of my causes in life. Buster does it backwards and sideways, but it needs to be done forward in time as well.

I was kinda wondering why I had never seen this play before, what with O’Neil being one of the big three of 20th Century American theater (Miller, Williams). When I got the tickets, I realized why. “4 hours and 45 minutes with three intermissions.” OMG, as the young people say.

Well, it’s quite an achievement given the fact that not very much happens during that time. What does happen is a kind of low-life poetic dialogue that gives you some idea of where Tom Waits, Jack Kerouac, and maybe William Burroughs came from, artistically speaking. There are moments of real beauty in this play, and while most of it is a massive O’Neil-style downer, the casting of Nathan Lane as “Hickey” does a great deal to inject a level of energy and mystery into the proceedings. Brian Dennehy is a perfect foil, one is faking happiness, the other despair, but both are terrified of THE VOID and give speech after speech to try to deflect or at least delay its strangling power. The rest of the cast is excellent too—the hookers who insist on being called “tarts” and the drunkards who dream of the days when they had something to live for (or as Dennehy’s character puts it “They manage to get drunk, by hook or by crook, and keep their pipe dreams, and that’s all they ask of life.” O’Neil at his best is matched only by Kafka for his ability to plumb the depths of human misery—no doubt spurred on by his own—and locate so much laughter and beauty on the way. This is a sad and beautiful play and a master class in classic theater. It is also crazy-long. True, it gains much of its power from the repetition it employs and the atmosphere of nuclear-level gloom that envelops it. And maybe it would not work at all were it cut by, say half, in which case it would still be pretty long. But if you’ve got the time and patience, it will be amply rewarded. “Iceman” will be at BAM for only five weeks (or so), so hurry up.

Diane Reeves at Rose Hall at Jazz@Lincoln Center, 2/13/15:

Well, Diane Reeves has one of the all time great voices and enormous range and skill. I love the album she did for the Clooney film about Murrow, “Good Night and Good Luck.” And give her points for expanding the “Songbook,” too. She sang songs by Fleetwood Mac and Bob Marley, along with the Billie Holiday-type thing one might have expected. And I was deeply impressed by her ability to carry a tune on and on with no words. (Of course she was aided by her crack band of pianist Peter Martin, guitarist Peter Sprague, bassist Reginald Veal, and drummer Terreon Gully). And the audience did love her. But I found about half the set a little too self indulgent, sung by an artist who knew the audience was going to love her no matter what. A song she wrote about being nine years old felt like it went on for nine years (and should have been saved for nine year olds in the first place). And the long scat introductions of the band were impressive but I found it grating. Maybe I’m a grouch. Well, actually, of course I’m a grouch. And again, much of the show was sublime. Interestingly, the crowd was much more integrated than I’m used to seeing at a Jazz show, which means, I guess that she has a fan base that spills more into pop than most. And again, they loved her, as I’m sure the second night’s audience did as well. But I think her set could use a dose of self-discipline rather than playing so much to the disciples. Sorry.